and they do learn mostly through osmosis no matter what that fucking fruitcake Dobson says!

PMS Purchase More Shoes

This is how it ends. Neither Israel nor the US has any more claims to being democratic countries.

This is total insanity. I really don't know what else to say. Both sides have gone over the edge.

I know this will be a "broken record" kind of comment, but why the hell was CNN non-stop coverage of the infamous trip to Graceland yesterday and the never-ending "will it or won't it launch" NASA coverage today with rarely a moment spent on this story?

Ok, I know, but still....

Doesn't information itself have a liberal bias? Steven Colbert

Fear not, the U.S. administration is closely monitoring the situation.  In the event that the U.S. government is taken over by Democrats and their blogofascist allies via nefarious and widespread democratic voter fraud, these tactics will prove greatly useful to defend Democracy by protecting us from such an illegitimately and improperly elected government.

before I die: Why do groups of people devolve into the behavior that they start out opposing? Israel was born out of a reaction to genocide and now that government is essentially the perpetrator of genocide. Their actions aren't as cold and systematic as the Nazi's but the end goal is the same -- the elimination of the Palestinian people.

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From friend and partner Israel. An IDF soldier was captured and held captive by Palestinian freedom fighters - activists - terrorists ...  

Hamas has reacted to the continued assassinations from Israeli air attacks and the shelling of the beach killing innocent Palestinians.

So Israel goes into Gaza and destroys the only electrical power plant of Gaza and two main bridges. This is nothing more than collective punishment for the civilian population.

CUT OFF: Palestinians assess a bridge destroyed by Israeli warplanes on a main road in the northern Gaza Strip. Israel knocked out electricity and attacked exit routes. Hatem Moussa/AP

● IDF bars East Jerusalem residents from using Bethlehem crossing

See my previous diary :: Bush and Olmert Choking Gaza & Palestinian Economy

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY

The whole sad affair was precipitated by the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit.

if one could identify a precipitating event in this endless cycle of violence, surely it would be the killing of the Palestinian family on the Gaza beach 2 weeks ago. Despite the IDF (typical) denials of responsibility it appears that there is solid evidence that the deaths were caused by an Israeli artillery shell.

Notice the pattern by the Israeli government-they always escalate these situations, by deploying disproportionate and brutal countermeasures.

They use iron-fist measurres while loudly proclaiming their victim status.

any objective observer should be able to parse this when reading accounts from any non-US news source (like the BBC for example).

The whole sad affair was precipitated by the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit.

This sentence reads just like the one-sided, partial reporting we get in the corporate media. At this point, positing a precipitating cause to a decades-long struggle is pretty meaningless, but it would be just ever so slightly relevant to note that preceding the "kidnapping(?)" (no, that word is used for civilians -- appropriate to the settler who got killed & the other one being held, but not to a CAPTURED soldier) the Israelis had been shelling Gaza the previous week, eventually killing a family, picnicking on the beach. Or the 50 airstrikes over the past month?

Wouldn't it be relevant to note that according to Israel, they were planning to kidnap the Hamas leadership weeks ago?

As the Ha'aretz editorial put it yesterday:

. . . arresting people to use as bargaining chips is the act of a gang, not of a state

Can't "progressives" learn to use the words Collective Punishment?

There is major humanitarian crisis about to erupt in Gaza, one for which the US bears some direct responsibility. If progressives won't speak out, who will?

From yesterday's NewsBucket:

Gaza Power Plant Hit by Israeli Airstrike is Insured by US Agency

The Palestinian power plant bombed by Israeli forces Tuesday is insured by a US government agency, and US officials say they expect American funds to be used to pay for the damage.

The destruction of the 140-megawatt reactor, the only one in the Gaza Strip, threatens to create a humanitarian disaster because the plant supplies electricity to two-thirds of Gaza's 1.3 million residents and operates pumps that provide water supplies.

But paying a claim on the plant, which was insured for $48 million, could prove problematic for the United States, which cut off funding for all infrastructure projects in the Palestinian territories after the militant group Hamas won legislative elections in January.

Administration officials said the restrictions on working with a Hamas-led government could further complicate the repair of the electric facility, which could take weeks, if not months, to fix because of the escalating violence in Gaza.   [snip]

The power plant cost about $150 million and took more than five years to build.

Plans for it began in 1999, when two private investors -- the now-defunct Enron Corp. and a Palestinian-born construction mogul, Said Khoury -- laid down the blueprint for making the Palestinian territories less reliant on buying electricity from Israel.   [snip]

In 2002, the plant began operating, becoming the first such facility regulated by the Palestinian Energy Authority. In 2004, it reached full commercial capacity and its owners were able to purchase $48 million in ``political risk" insurance from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation , an arm of the US government that provides American businesses with financing abroad and promotes US interests in emerging markets.

The US Investment Corporation -- set up in 1971 with US taxpayer funds -- had been supportive of the project from the beginning, arranging the first meeting between investors for the plant, according to the Bloomberg news service.

Few commercial insurance companies insure such projects against political violence, but the US Investment Corporation does so to encourage development in emerging markets, according to Lawrence Spinelli, a spokesman for the Investment Corporation.

The insurance that Morganti purchased covers ``political violence," which includes ``wars, acts of terrorism, things like that," Spinelli said. To be paid for the damage, the company must file a claim, and the Investment Corporation must determine whether the claim is covered by the policy, Spinelli said.

The corporation raises its reserve funds through insurance premiums and other charges to its clients, but its funds are kept in the US Treasury and are controlled by Congress.   [snip]

"If you take out two-thirds of the power in a place like Gaza, and if this is the source of electricity that powers pumps for water, you may have a major crisis on your hand in short order," said Ed Abington , a former consultant to the Palestinian Authority.

Think this doesn't affect "US interests?" Think again & recall what triggered the killing of the 4 Blackwater contractors in Fallujah, what we now see as a decisive point in the Iraq occupation. It was the Israeli assasination of a prominent Hamas leader.

Helena Cobban:

As always, then, what is important in Gaza today is not the "mere" matter of military superiority, devastating though military technology can be to the lives and wellbeing of individuals. But as always, what is important in Gaza-- as in US-occupied Iraq-- is the way all this military superiority plays out at the political level.

". . . the more educated you are, the more indoctrinated you are. After all, propaganda is largely directed towards the privileged." -Noam Chomsky

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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY

There seems to be a blackout of any videos or photos of Gaza.

Banned but hopefully not forgotten.